Is advertising losing its best talent to films?

A mailer from The Ad Club hit our inboxes just as we were working on this story. It said ‘These Ex-Ad Professionals, Who’ve Made a Name For Themselves, Might Not Come Back To Advertising in 2017’ listing out an honour roll that includes everyone from Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien (ex O&M) to film directors Shyam Benegal (ex Lintas), Dibakar Banerjee (ex-Contract) and R Balki (ex-Lowe Lintas). We have a feeling the Ad Club can run the same ad the next year, and all they’ll have to do is update it with a fresh list of people who’ve turned their backs on advertising, never to return.

Advertising and other creative industries — particularly the Indian film industry — have been joined at the hip, in a way. Ad folk end up giving stars a lot of work and income and the stars often turn around and give the ad folk the opportunity to live their big screen film dreams. The first generation of ad folk who got serious about films chose parallel lives and careers, a tough ask by any reckoning. Balki, till recently group chairman and creative chief at MullenLowe Lintas Group worked out a nine-month contract with his agency, allowing him three months to make films every year — it’s a different matter that after his debut he didn’t do a film for four years and so claims (tongue firmly in cheek) the agency got a year’s worth of his time free of charge. Rensil D’Silva juggled a full-time job at Meridian, Ogilvy’s second agency while making his first film Qurbaan and Prasoon Joshi continues to be chairman, McCann Worldgroup, Asia Pacific while managing a career as a sought-after lyricist and scriptwriter.

However, for many trying the double life, the cracks are beginning to show. Nitish Tewari, D’Silva, Juhi Chaturvedi (script writer on Vicky Donor and Piku whose last ad job was at Leo Burnett) and Balki are just some of the names who’ve shifted completely to films.

Among the people in advertising, the spirit is willing to make the leap, but the flesh is weak, or in some cases, lazy and comfortable. But for younger talent, the money may sometimes, quite literally, not be enough. Bobby Pawar, managing director and chief creative officer, Publicis India ruefully says, “The pay scales aren’t great. Just as we’ve lost MBAs to other industries, we may lose marquee creative talent.” Work pressures make it even less worthwhile. Says N Padmakumar (Paddy), who left Rediffusion Y&R in 2012 as the national creative director to take up filmmaking, “The job had become joyless. Creative people are getting evaluated lesser on their creative work and more on their relationships.” According to Ramanuj Shastry, founder, Infectious, “Accountants got hold of the business and we lost all our swagger. Barring a few brilliant pieces here and there, it’s largely been shit. Nobody looks up to advertising which has become a cover-your-ass function.” While in agencies, creative people are often told to “get with the programme”, Shastry says, the best talent has figured that “great content gets you more eyeballs and money. They don’t even have to work with an agency to make ads.”

Talent leaving, or opting for television or film and not coming into advertising in the first place, couldn‘t be happening at a worse time for the business. While the 30-second commercial is not dead by a long shot, long form branded content is the need of the hour. And, in many cases, marketers are not necessarily looking to agencies to get their fix. Everyone from pure-play content companies like AIB and TVF to production houses like Y Films, a division of Yash Raj has a hat in the ring or an idea on standby, waiting for a relevant brand connection. It’s an area that’s still being defined, and which agencies are ambiguous about: whether their roles ought to be creators, curators or the ones who make sure the brand gets adequately represented. Pawar recalls an instance during his stint abroad where they once jammed with the writers of The Simpsons and says “It was like being in machine gun fire in Afghanistan. Before I could react to an idea, another was in the air. Finally, our job was to narrow it down to what does and doesn’t work for the brand. You are not the puppet master. At best, you are one of the puppets.”

While pretty much helpless when it comes to stemming the tide, some ad folk have enough of a perspective on how at least Bollywood works to realise it’s not a realm of boundless freedom that, many of those making or contemplating a shift imagine it to be. All they can do is caution their friends, juniors and colleagues about the potential pitfalls of a purely content driven industry. One needs to catch the right breaks, and at least in Bollywood, writers typically rank low on the totem pole, superseded by actors, directors, singers and music directors.​Besides, where the some see an exodus, others only see a culling. Sajan Raj Kurup, founder, Creativeland Asia observes wryly, “I know one good writer and a couple of average ones from advertising who joined AIB. I don’t know if there is a correlation but the quality of content from AIB has fallen drastically ever since.”